


Move On, Look Back

by storry_eyed



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Angst, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-10 23:19:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8943481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storry_eyed/pseuds/storry_eyed
Summary: Your first handshake is awkward; she fumbles for your fingers before latching on and holding tight. If it’s this hard for you, you know it must be torture for her as well. But the way she looks at you- so intense, her eyes never wavering from your face, tells a different story.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Melime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melime/gifts).



> Written for Melime for this year's Star Trek Secret Santa. I hope you enjoy!

Your first handshake is awkward; she fumbles for your fingers before latching on and holding tight. If it’s this hard for you, you know it must be torture for her as well. But the way she looks at you- so intense, her eyes never wavering from your face, tells a different story. Later you find out she had the option to leave, but chose to remain and face you head on. This is so like Dax that it brings tears to your eyes even as you smile, but the more time you spend with her, the more you realize it’s also just like Jadzia. You’ve never been the one to confront life, you think to yourself; that’s one reason why Dax was so good for you – Dax brought you out of your shell, forced you into the world whether you liked it or not so you had to make decisions, had to make choices, instead of standing back and letting the world swirl around you, always doing the right thing and so never really doing anything at all.

~~~  
You do your best to show a little more initiative – after all, it’s you who walks up to Dax at the party, and you who initiates the conversation. You want to make it clear that you’re in complete control of the situation, of yourself, and so you make light of things, joking with Dax, falling back into that same pattern you always used to have. But there’s something about Dax’s response, something about the fact that Dax doesn’t actually address what you’ve said, and something about the way you’re both pausing before speaking, choosing every word so carefully, so as not to suggest anything that might be dangerous or lead to more, that makes you wonder if there is actually more simmering beneath the surface than either of you are brave enough to acknowledge.

It’s not until you’re separated again, standing at opposite corners of the room, alone, and yet connected by the intensity of Jadzia’s gaze, that you realize what it is. Some strange combination of extreme sadness over past events and overwhelming gladness that you are in each other’s orbit again, and that the conversation you had feels so close, and yet so far, from everything that you had been and could be, that you ache with the loss with a pain you haven’t felt since the first day you woke up alone, knowing that Dax was moving on in the world while you stayed behind. Always left behind.

~~~  
Reassociation. As a good member of Trill society who’s always toed the line, the very word makes your skin crawl and your breath catch. You may have sat beside Torias for your every waking hour while he remained in a coma, but as soon as the symbiont was placed in Curzon, you ceased all contact despite the gaping hole it left in your heart. Anything else was unthinkable. And yet, here you are, thinking it.

Despite the flashes of annoyance when Jadzia uses the word panic that you know comes from Kahn, despite the way you correct yourself over and over to make it clear that this is coming from Nilani and not from you, you can’t deny that what you feel when Jadzia says that Torias is sorry comes from you and not from Nilani. And you can’t deny that despite Jadzia’s care to separate out Dax’s past hosts from herself, you’re pretty sure that the feelings she’s describing are her own, too. And when Jadzia says, “we have a lot of work to do,” you’re pretty sure she doesn’t mean on the wormhole test.

~~~

When Jadzia takes your hand this time, there over dinner, there’s no hesitation, no fumbling, all smooth grace and sure grasp. 

You’ve never understood how it could be possible, two Trill choosing to throw everything away, essentially executing the symbiont, just because some feelings were too strong to ignore. But you’re finding that there’s something unexpectedly weighty about the centuries of feeling you experience from the symbiont, especially when it’s all in support of your own emotions, the emotions that are betraying everything you thought you stood for, all for love of one being.

The voice inside you, screaming that this is wrong, isn’t really growing quieter, but it is growing more questioning. You don’t let go of her hand.

~~~  
But you do take things into your own hands, as it turns out. The conversation with your brother is just enough to push you over the edge, to send you storming into Jadzia’s quarters, to send the words that you’ve both been thinking flying from your lips. The right idea. The one thing you know both of you want, more than anything else, right in this moment. To be together. 

For once, your roles are reversed. Dax pushes back, trying to stop the inevitable, and you pull her forward, push you both forward. You are sick of denying it, sick of pretending, sick of worrying which is worse: pushing down your own feelings or hearing the voice in your head that keeps reciting your duty as a joined Trill. For this one moment, you are just Lenara Kahn, and as your lips touch the lips of Jadzia Dax, everything goes silent except the peace you feel, knowing that you are back where you were always meant to be.

~~~  
It doesn’t last.

Somehow you think you knew, all along, that you only had the courage to stand up once. No matter what you tell Dax, even as you are holding each other and you’re both saying you can never bear to lose each other again, you know that it’s the beginning of the end. The one shining moment when you kissed, as it turns out, is enough to sustain you, enough that when the voice comes back, reminding you of duty and passing the symbiont on and honor and your job and the promise you made when you became a joined Trill, you listen to it. You’re so used to tamping down your feelings, pushing everything you’ve wanted away for the greater good of Trill society and for the place you have as only one link in a chain, that even though the ache is sharper, the feelings more in focus, you fall back into your old patterns like it’s almost a relief. 

Jadzia comes to see you, and you are so calm, so gentle, so perfect an example of what she should be. For one wavering second, you wish that she would kiss you again, that she could pull that courageous part of you back out of the box you’ve locked it in now that you know it exists. But she doesn’t. Dax has always been one who lets people make their own choices, but in this one instance, that one split second, you wish that Jadzia would realize the one thing about you that Dax has never quite figured out – that you have to have the options presented to you, again and again, have to be encouraged and poked and prodded in the direction you really want to go, for you to be able to stand up and make that choice. But she doesn’t, and she leaves, and you leave, too.

~~~  
For one moment, just before you make the step you know you’ll never be able to reverse, you glance around. Maybe she’ll be here, and maybe the sight of her will be enough to cause you to make this decision that so much of you still wants to make. You just need one more reason, just one tiny hint, to push you over the edge. But you don’t see her, and you turn away, stepping into the shuttle. You know she’ll be alright. Dax has always been a survivor, and you know that Jadzia is, too. Jadzia Dax will get over you, you tell yourself, and you believe it’s true. You know it’s true. And it is only this knowledge that gives you the courage to step inside the transport wrapped in the comfort of the only way forward that you can see, the way that Jadzia Dax would want you to go. If this is the decision you make, this is the way she would want you to do it, and so you this is what you will do: you will live life to the fullest, live life the way that she would want you to, by moving on, moving forward, facing everything head on, never shrinking away. And it’s the certainty of that compromise with yourself which carries you on to the ship, and when you again glance back through the window one last time, and you think you see her face, so sad, so lost and alone and unsure of what step to take next, this is what keeps you going. For once, your perpetual positions are reversed, and you are the one who is leaving. Maybe you’re still the one who always does the right thing, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do anything at all.


End file.
